The Hispanic vote isn’t key unless Republicans make it so

Byron York challenges the idea that supposedly is driving the Republican Party’s cave-in on amnesty — the notion that the Hispanic vote was a key element in Mitt Romney’s defeat. Byron shows that President Obama would have won the election even if Romney had captured a majority of the Hispanic vote.

Republicans are barking up the wrong tree in pandering to Hispanic voters. First, as Byron indicates, they don’t seem to be a major reason why the Party is losing. Second, there is little reason to think the Party can win a substantially larger share of the Hispanic vote without departing significantly from conservative principles. Third, a conservative party certainly won’t be able to make inroads among the, say, 20 million new poor, low-information voters that the Schumer-Rubio legislation would create.

The path to Republican success runs not through Hispanic voters, but rather through the millenials and their successors. They won’t be easy for a conservative party to win over either, but at least the task is imaginable, especially given the economic peril associated with the other party’s policies.

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